Notitia hungáriae novae historico geographica (Budapest, 2011)
BEVEZETÉS - A szöveg tipográfiája - Irodalomjegyzék és mutatók
28 INTRODUCTION Some time before his death but certainly after 1742, Bél prepared another plan for the edition of Notitia}2 However this draft is strangely less elaborate than the one dating from 1732 since it lacks the principles and methods already elaborated in the previous version. The arranging according to the geographical logic has no trace, the counties follow each other randomly. Tie Cistibiscan and Transtibiscan districts are melted together, which means that the division by districts was equally abandoned by the old author. Beside he was constrained by circumstances because the description of Árva and Trencsén counties had to be ranked at the last place in order, eventhough they should have been placed in the first part (Pars Cis-Danubialis) according to the 1732 draft. The reason for that is that Árva’s description was not to be revised by the county authority, since they finally rejected the demand after years of delay on their part; concerning Trencsén’s description, most probably it could not be fitted in the 4th volume.22 23 Therefore Bél decided to continue with the Transdanubian counties (out of which only Moson got to print) because the two remaining Northern counties would have not filled up a volume on their own. So in this latter plan he meant to place Árva’s and Trencsén’s descriptions in the 6th gigantic volume (finally not materialized), and even in that volulme to the last place, after counties like Békés, Arad, Csanád.24 Our division of the work into volumes As we have seen above, Bél’s plan of 1742-1749 mostly lacks the original editorial principles of the Notitia, suggested by the titles of the printed volumes as well,25 namely the presentation by „parts” and the geographical order. Consequently we thought it appropriate to favour in our edition the firstly presented autograph plan of 1732 including Bél’s initial conceptions, because it was written with Bél’s immense motivation for the work, still trusting the undertaking’s successful accomplishment. In this respect we wish to firstly publish the two „remaining” counties belonging to the Cisdanubian part (Árva, Trencsén) and afterwards the other parts’ remaining counties (Transdanubian, Cistibiscan, Transtibiscan) according to the order established in the plan of 1732. We only have to diverge from the plan in a few cases (or it was partly Bél who could not keep to certain points of his plan). The first such an exception is Komárom county’s description that was in Bél’s plan of 1732 linked to the Cisdanubian part but we will publish it in the Transdanubian part. The main reason for that is that Bél later consciously categorised Komárom to the Transdanubian counties,26 on the other hand we are also gaining some time from this categorisation, since the manuscript was badly damaged and we can devote more time on the difficult reconstruction of the text. From the Transdanubian part the Slavonic counties will be missing since Bél didn’t make them according to his plan and we are therefore unable to publish them. The situation of description of Szepes 22 The plan remained in the note by Ferdinánd Jakab Miller, secretary of József Batthyány, archbishop of Esztergom. He prepared this note after arranging Bél’s manuscript legacy and he wished to complete with it the just published Memoria Hungarorum by Elek Horányi and its biography about Bél. The secretary copied into his note the plan and he mentioned that it was written by Bél himself on the page attached to the manuscript volumes of the Notitia. See Miller 1775. 214. See Bél’s plan ibidem 214—215. 23 See the introductions to the counties in our volume. 24 About the plan of 1742—1749 see Tóth 2008. 433-435. 25 See note 2. 26 Tóth 2008. 436.
